The Psychology of Beauty

The simplest element of visual experience is of course found in light and color, the sensation of the eye as such. Yet there is no branch of aesthetic which is so incomplete. We know that the sensation of light or color, if not too weak or too violent, is in itself pleasing. The bright, the glittering, shining object, so long as it is not painful, is pleasantly stimulating. Gems, tinsel, lacquer, polish, testify to this taste, from the most primitive to the most civilized man. Color, too, if distinct, not over-bright, nor too much extended in field, is in itself pleasing.

The single colors have been the object of comparatively little study. Experiment seems to show that the colors containing most brightness-white, red, and yellow-are preferred. Baldwin, in his "dynamogenic" experiments,<1> based on "the view that the infant's hand movements in reaching or grasping are the best index of the kind and intensity of its sensory experiences," finds that the colors range themselves in order of attractiveness, blue, white, red, green, brown. Further corrections lay more emphasis upon the white. Yellow was not included in the experiments. Cohn's results, which show a relative dislike of yellow, are contradicted by other observers, notably Major and Baker,<2> and (unpublished) experiments of my own, including the aesthetic preferences of seven or eight different sets of students at Radcliffe and Wellesley colleges. Experiments of this kind are particularly difficult, inasmuch as the material, usually colored paper, varies considerably from the spectral color, and differences in saturation, hue, and brightness make great differences in the results, while the feeling-tone of association, individual or racial, very often intrudes. But other things being equal, the bright, the clear, the saturated color is relatively more pleasing, and white, red, and yellow seem especially preferred.

<1> Mental Development in the Child and the Race, 1895, pp. 39, 50, ff. <2> E. S. Baker, Univ. of Toronto Studies, Psychol. Series, No. 4; J. Cohn, Philos. Studien, vol. X; Major, Amer. Jour. of Psychol., vol. vii.

Now, according to the Hering theory of color, white, red, and yellow are the so-called "dissimilating" colors in the three pairs, white-black, red-green, and yellow-blue, corresponding to three hypothetical visual substances in the retina. These substances, that is, in undergoing a kind of chemical disintegration under the action of light-rays, are supposed to give the sensations white, red, or yellow respectively, and in renewing themselves again to give the sensations of black, green, and blue. The dissimilating process seems to bring about stronger reactions on the physiological side, as if it were a more exciting process. Thus it is found<1> that as measured by the increase in strength of the hand grip under the stimulation of the respective colors, red has particularly exciting qualities, but the other colors have an analogous effect, lessening, however, with the descent from red to violet. The pleasure in bright red, or yellow, for instance, may thus well be the feeling-tone arising in the purely physiological effect of the color. If red works like a trumpet call, while blue calms and cools, and if red is preferred to blue, it is because a sharp stimulation is so felt, and so preferred.

<1> Ch. Fere, Sensation et Mouvement, 1887, p. 80.

The question of the demands of the eye in color combination is still more complicated. It has been traditional to consider the complementaries black-white, red-green, blue-yellow, and the other pairs resulting from the mixtures of these as the best combinations. The physiological explanation is of course found in the relief and refreshment to the organs in successive alternation of the processes of assimilation and dissimilation, and objectively in the reinforcement, through this stronger functioning of the retina, of the complementary colors themselves. This tendency to mutual aid is shown in the familiar experiment of fixating for some moments a colored object, say red, and then transferring the gaze to a white or gray expanse. The image of the object appears thereon in the complementary green. Per contra, the most complete lack of contrast makes the most unpleasing combination, because instead of a refreshing alternation of processes in the retina, a fatiguing repetition results. Red and orange (red-yellow), or red and purple (red-blue), successively stimulate the red- process with most evil effect.

This contrast theory should, however, not be interpreted too narrowly. There are pairs of so-called complementaries which make a very crude, harsh, even painful impression. The theory is happily supplemented by showing<1> that the ideal combination involves all three contrast factors, hue, saturation, and brightness. Contrast of saturation or brightness within the same hue is also pleasant. For any two qualities of the color circle, in fact, there can be found degrees of saturation and brightness in which they will form an agreeable combination, and this pleasing effect will be based on some form of contrast. But the absolute and relative extension and the space-form of the components have also a great influence on the pleasurableness of combinations.

<1> A. Kirschmann, "Die psychol.-aesthet. Bedeutung des Licht und Farbencontrastes," Philos. Studien, vol. vii.

Further rules can hardly be given; but the results of various observers<1> seem to show that the best combinations lie, as already said, among the complementaries, or among those pairs nearer together in the color circle than complementaries, which are "warmer." The reason for this last is that, in Chevreul's phraseology, combinations of cold colors change each other's peculiar hue the most, and of warm colors the least; because the complementaries of these cold colors are "warm," i.e. bright, and each, appearing on the field of the neighboring cold color, seems to fade it out; while the complementaries of the juxtaposed warm colors are not bright, and do not have sufficient strength to affect their neighbors at all. With a combination of blue and green for instance, a yellow shade would appear in the green and a red in the blue. Such a result fails to satisfy the demand, already touched on, for purity and homogeneity of color,-that is, for unimpeded seeing of color.

<1> Chevreul, De la Loi du Contraste Simultane des Couleurs. E.S. Banker, op. Cit.

What significance have these abstract principles of beauty in the combination of colors for representative art? In the choice of objects with a definite local color, of course, these laws will be found operative. A scheme of blues and yellows is likely to be more effective than one of reds and violets. If we analyze the masterpiece of coloring, we shall find that what we at first supposed to be the wonderful single effects of color is really the result of juxtapositions which bring out each color to its highest power.